Barbara Hemphill presents Is The Paperless Office Finally Here?

March 9, 2011 - PRLog -- In the CNN.com article “Is The ‘Paperless’ Office Here at Last?,” Thom Patterson visits the concept of offices going paperless via Trend Hunter, which by the way has an empty filing cabinet.  The “dream” of the paperless office started in 1975 when BusinessWeek magazine predicted futuristic visions of “electronic filing cabinets” that would be life changing.  In fact, they stated that most record handling would be kept electronically by 1990.  However, fast-forward to 20 years later and people are still afraid to get rid of paper and rely heavily on hard copies.

Some of the reasons cited sited by Patterson varied from the simple convenience of reading from a hard copy to just not wanting to throw things away out of fear. However, according to the article, there are a number of motivating factors to moving towards going paperless.  Using less paper helps preserve the environment and also eliminates costs related to mailings and physical storage, the safety net of the good ole trusted file cabinet.

Fortunately, technology gives offices, including home-based, the opportunity to go paperless. There may be a learning curve or the exercise of change management, but it is possible. Gutsche sites that within his company the younger generation that’s grown up with computers are better able to adjust to the idea of reducing the use of paper via technology.  It’s taken a little longer with those who don’t fall into that category, but they have come along as well. As a result, the workflow moves quicker as archived information can be easily accessed.

So if technology is the key to a paperless office, what are some key starting points?

In spite of predictions that paperless offices would be the norm by the 1990’s, the reality is that most businesses still use paper, and many businesses believe that paper records are vital to effective recordkeeping.

However, the motivation to “paperless” continues to increase for three major reasons:

1.The cost of using and the time required to manage paper and then converting it to digital
2.The pressure to be environmentally friendly
3.The documented evidence that overall productivity increases significantly with the ability to share electronic documents virtually.
So if the evidence is so strong, why are companies so reluctant?  Based on my 25+ years in offices around the world, there are several major stumbling blocks:

Lack of knowledge
Lack of resources
Lack of teamwork
Lack of motivation
Lack of Knowledge

Moving toward paperless requires knowledge in a variety of areas: records retention legal guidelines, technology, and human behavior. Identify the area/s that are your stumbling blocks, and seek our resources on the internet for self-study or hire a specialist to help you.
www.arma.org and www.productiveenvironment.com can link you with consultants in this area.

Lack of Resources
You can move slowly to "Almost paperless" by utilizing a key Paper Tiger principle: "Today's mail is tomorrow's pile." Ignore all the paper records of the past, and begin utilizing digital solutions for everything that new that comes into your office. You can utilize a program such as iPEP for less than $500, and the amount of money you will save will far exceed your investment almost immediately.

Lack of Teamwork
Any successful project requires a champion. In most organizations, there is someone who would be delighted to take responsibility for that role - seek them out, and reward them for their efforts.

Lack of Motivation
The biggest source of motivation is understanding the vision. Some people wait to decide to eat healthy and get exercise when the doctor says it's a life threading issue. Poor information management is life threatening to any business, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

A great way to "jump start" the process is to hold what I call a "Productive Environment Day™" -- a day devoted to cleaning out physical and electronic information that is no longer needed by the company. One client had such a day and in a two hour period 30 employees recycles 50+ pounds of paper/person. On the same day in the afternoon, one employee alone eliminated 20,000 electronic records.

For additional information- http://www.barbarahemphill.com

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